Day 6

Lyon and Ars. Out here in the Lyon region, the evening air is crisp and fresh. It was the first really warm day of the trip and I am sitting here at 845pm in shirtsleeves outside writing this. It is still light and only starts to get pitch dark after 1030pm. We drove quite a bit today, leaving Paris behind. The whole countryside is green here and the roads very good - reminiscent of SA's roads some years back before they were allowed to deteriorate the way they have. We stopped at a winery to taste some wines, but they only made white wines and rose's . Their Cabernet Sauvignon's were oddly also rose's so we left empty handed, not convinced that there was anything to be had here on the wine front that would surpass in both value and quality what we could get back home. Off to Ars we went, to see the place where St Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney lived and worked. He was an amazing man, and is probably my favourite saint. Ars is a small village, albeit more modernised now, but it still carries the spirit of Jean Vianney and is obviously a place that sees many pilgrims. For such a small village, the basilica is breathtaking and the artwork far surpasses anything we have in our Cathedral in Cape Town. It was quite funny that at neither Ars or our Lyon campsite where we are spending the night, had they ever met anybody from South Africa. I think when we told them we were from Africa, they took a second to register that white people actually lived there! It was worth the look on their faces, though.

It is so peaceful at this campsite. A river runs alongside the campsite, surrounded by greenery and trees everywhere, and it is so quiet and peaceful. Our experience has been that the French we have encountered are polite, perhaps aloof, but not unfriendly. I was saying to Richard that I know I will miss my friends and family once we have left SA, but there is nothing about Africa that I will miss. I love the civilised way of life over here. Not just the wild criminality of Africa, but the heat and the dust and the increasing filth and litter that is so noticeable by its absence, here. Some Europeans visit Africa and fall in love with its untamed beauty. I was born and lived there and just never did. I think it is as simple and perhaps as facile as that.

Richard has attached photos of some of the art detail from inside the dome of the Basilica as well as an external street view and a shot taken from the inside and outside of the winery .

Tomorrow it is off to Rome - and we are expecting organised chaos, so will chat then.

Cheers!